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A review by createabeast
The Kept by James Scott
1.0
An attempt a grim reality, which doesn't hold up.
The essential setting and characters were interesting and far and away the best part of The Kept, but they are misused. I checked this book out based on a partial interview I heard on NPR. I don't regret reading it, but I also wouldn't call it a good book, and am really glad I didn't buy it or gift it to others.The premise is what hooked me, and it didn't deliver.
There is a problem when pampered, professionally over-educated writers think they have something to say about grimness and redemption, when nothing in their lives has ever approached the grimness of their subject matter, and no sin they've ever committed would allow them the glimpse at what real redemption would feel like. They are forced to over-think it, and pretend, and rely on a whole community of pampered, similarly-cloistered peers to encourage them.
I found the end was weak and unsatisfying. I think the intent was to convey a sense of anticlimax, in an effort to be more like "grim reality". But it comes off as an amateurish misunderstanding of what "grim reality" looks like. It actually ended pretty much how I feared it would. Sadly, not empathetic concern for the characters, but fear for the quality of the story. I was with the book for most of the way, hoping that the author would find a way out of this without being cliche or (just as bad, perhaps worse) trying so hard to avoid cliche that he just writes himself into a blank page and calls that an ending.
The essential setting and characters were interesting and far and away the best part of The Kept, but they are misused. I checked this book out based on a partial interview I heard on NPR. I don't regret reading it, but I also wouldn't call it a good book, and am really glad I didn't buy it or gift it to others.The premise is what hooked me, and it didn't deliver.
There is a problem when pampered, professionally over-educated writers think they have something to say about grimness and redemption, when nothing in their lives has ever approached the grimness of their subject matter, and no sin they've ever committed would allow them the glimpse at what real redemption would feel like. They are forced to over-think it, and pretend, and rely on a whole community of pampered, similarly-cloistered peers to encourage them.
I found the end was weak and unsatisfying. I think the intent was to convey a sense of anticlimax, in an effort to be more like "grim reality". But it comes off as an amateurish misunderstanding of what "grim reality" looks like. It actually ended pretty much how I feared it would. Sadly, not empathetic concern for the characters, but fear for the quality of the story. I was with the book for most of the way, hoping that the author would find a way out of this without being cliche or (just as bad, perhaps worse) trying so hard to avoid cliche that he just writes himself into a blank page and calls that an ending.